Less the 20 mins drive from Auckland CBD is North Shore..this is where I am heading this session to join the guys from local kayak specialty store Canoe & Kayak. They have set up a regular Weds night fishing trip for newcomers and experienced kayaks to have a go at fishing from the kayak… In this session I am out with Alan, trip leader and coordinator (and local fisho with all the local knowledge 😉 where he is taking me on a personal tour of his local reef,,Browns Bay reef… this will be the first instalment of many trips to the North Shore over the next year to showcase how great the fishing is in Auckland ( I hope to join them every Weds when weather and time permit) .

With a population of well over 200 thousand on the North Shore alone not to mention the 1.3million + based in the very near Auckland region it is hard to believe the fishing would be of any significance, I would assume it is fished pretty hard. Alan confirms that most of the boaties forget to fish there feet and instead head out to the surrounding Islands in the hope to land the big one from the deeper water. This is great for the kayakers and small tinnie owners as within 5 mins paddle of the beach you can both catch a feed but it is also possible to land a whopper snapper or Kingi in the shallows.. Alan’s best here is 23lb,,, he regularly takes home snapper in the 45+cm range using exclusively soft plastics.

In this trip we fished the outgoing tide almost at the bottom of the tide which is not the best, and the results showed that. I fished both bait (octopus from my dive trip in Hahei see that trip report HERE) and Z-Man jerk shad soft plastics.. Alan fished exclusively Soft Plastics. It took us longer to set up the kayaks than it did t paddle to the fishing ground 5mins max.. Once the Garmin sounders picked up some sign at 10M we set the drift and fished for the next hour…the results

For my running record of lures v bait these are the results of the take home fish from this trip

Z-Man -1 (soft plastics)

Octopus – 2 (bait)

Here’s a short intro video (my camera battery ran out once we started fishing so just a teaser) ..if you are in the area and want to join one of these regular weds night kayak fishing trips get in touch with Rob or Chris at Canoe and kayak North Shore…contact link HERE let them know you heard about the trips from me.